Milkman's search for identity in Song of Songs of Solomon tells the story of Dead's unwitting search for identity. Milkman appears to be doomed to a life of self-alienation and isolation due to his commitment to the materialism and linear conception of time that are part of the legacy he receives from his father, Macon Dead. However, during a trip to his ancestral home, “Milkman comes to understand his place in a cultural and familial community and to appreciate the value of conceiving of time as a cyclical process” (Smith 58). The Dead exemplify the patriarchal nuclear family. which has traditionally been a stable and critical feature not only of American society but of Western civilization in general. The primary institution for the reproduction and maintenance of children ideally provides individuals with the means to understand their place in the world. The degeneration of the Dead family and the destructiveness of Macon's rugged individualism symbolize the invalidity of American, indeed Western, values. Morrison's depiction of this ...